Distemper (3 page)

I’m not proud. I screamed my head off, before something made me clamp my hand over my mouth to shut myself up. In retrospect,
maybe I was clued in by the fact that the scene was so obviously fresh. She was clean, not covered with leaves or mud; it
had rained the previous night, but her clothes didn’t look wet. Some instinct told me that she’d been put there in the past
few hours—minutes
even—and that meant that whoever did it could still be there.

I spun around, checking out every direction, but I couldn’t see anyone. That didn’t mean anything, though; off the bike path,
the woods are thick with old-growth trees big enough for two people to hide behind. He—they—could be anywhere, waiting to
swap one victim for another. I stared down at the body, picturing myself lying there in her place, with my sweatshirt and
tights and sports bra folded…

A noise—a bird or an animal or something way worse—shook the trees and a branch went snap. Whatever it was, it sent me running,
snagging my tights on the undergrowth. I was trying to watch where I was going and look around at the same time, and it didn’t
work; I went sprawling over a log and landed on all fours. As I scrambled back up I was sure I could hear something behind
me but I was afraid if I looked back it would be all over. Five seconds later I was by my bike. I forced myself to wait long
enough to turn it around before I jumped on and went barreling down the hill.

If I’d had time to think about it, I would have realized that even if someone was chasing me, there was no way he could catch
me on foot when I was going twenty miles an hour, but all I could think of was getting away. I was coasting faster and faster,
the trees whipping by in a gray-brown blur, my helmet swinging lamely from the handlebars where I’d left it when I got off.
I must have hit a rock, because the next thing I knew I was somersaulting over the handlebars. I landed with a thud, and then
I was no use to anybody.

What happened right after that is sort of hazy, which
the doctor tells me is perfectly normal for someone who flew ass over teakettle ten feet in the air. I was out for a while,
how long I don’t know, but somehow I got back on my bike and drove into town. The police station is on Spring Street, a half-hour
ride from where I fell, and I have a very dim memory of thinking I had to get there. I know I could have just gone out to
the road and flagged someone down, but at the time it never even occurred to me. I rode all the way to the cops, ditched my
bike, and dragged myself inside.

There was a uniformed officer behind a heavy plastic partition. He took one look at me and disappeared, which in my altered
state seemed the height of rudeness until I realized he was coming through a door to my left. Later, I found out he’d taken
me for a battered wife.

“I need to see the police…”

“Ma’am, what’s happened?”

“I need to report… a murder.”

“Let’s have you sit down.”

“No, I don’t want to sit down.” I was swaying on my feet, and everything hurt. “Please, she’s out in the woods. Someone has
to go get her. Don’t you understand? It’s just like the other one. I found her. I found another dead girl in the woods. Please,
you have to go get her.”

The cop got it instantly; after all, we don’t see a whole lot of murders around here. The previous body was hanging over everyone,
and I was telling him there was another. “Can you wait right here?” I nodded, which was a big mistake, since it made the whole
hallway spin and start to fade at the edges. I wanted to sit then, but I was afraid if I took a step I was only going in one
direction, which was down. I heard a door open behind me.

“Miss,” said a man’s voice. “I’m Detective Cody. I need to ask you a few questions.”

I turned around to face him, and that was it. I got a glimpse of reddish hair, and the next thing I knew I was keeling over
in a full-out faint. The last thing I remember is someone catching me before I hit the ground, and the random thought that
whoever he was, he smelled pretty good.

I woke up in the hospital, which was exactly where I belonged. You always see in movies where the hero gets really badly hurt
but he has to go save the world so he refuses to stay in bed and checks himself out against the advice of his doctor. All
I wanted to do was lie under the covers and have some male nurse bring me sugar-free Jell-O. But the first thing I heard was
yelling from out in the hall.

“So when
can
I see her?”

“When she wakes up. I told you, she’s had a damn good bump on the head.”

“Don’t you have to wake her up to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion?”

“We’ve already ascertained that. She doesn’t. But she’s got two broken ribs, a sprained wrist, and thirty-two stitches. She
needs her rest.”

Jesus
, I thought,
they’d better be talking about somebody else
. No such luck. “Doctor, that girl is a witness to a homicide. The last thing she said before she passed out was that she
had found a body. Now, if she’s telling the truth, it means there’s a dead girl out there somewhere. The longer we wait, the
more likely it is my crime scene will be compromised. That means the less likely we’re
going to be able to find this son of a bitch. It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. That means another night that somebody’s
parents are going to go to bed not knowing if their daughter is alive or dead. Do you really want that on your head?”

“Detective, I appreciate your situation, but I can’t…”

“Five minutes. That’s all.”

Silence. I opened my mouth to call out that I was awake and all their manly arguing was for nothing, but when I breathed in
I got a sharp jab that almost made me throw up. “Your word?” I heard the doctor say.

“Five minutes.” There was a light knock on the door and before I could even try to answer they came in. “See, she’s already
awake.”

The doctor had gray hair and a stethoscope around his neck, like something out of an ad for cough syrup. “Do you feel well
enough to talk?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m Dr. Krauss. This is Detective Cody from the Gabriel police. He wants to ask you a few questions. I told him”—he turned
to the other man—“to keep it short.”

“It’s fine,” I croaked. “I want to talk to him.”

“I’ll be back to check on you in an hour, and the nurses’ station is just down the hall. If you need anything, just ring the
bell.”

As soon as the doctor left, the detective pulled a chair up by the bed. “I’ll make this quick, I promise. What’s your name?”

“Alex Bernier.”

“Alex, I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll get right to the point. The desk sergeant said you mentioned a body.”

“Out in the woods. It was awful. I was riding my bike and I found her.”

“Where?”

I told him. “It was just like they described the other girl last month, the one on Connecticut Hill. She was naked, and her
clothes were next to her. She looked like she’d been strangled. She had these odd marks around her neck.”

“Did you touch the body?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you see anyone else out there?”

“I’m not sure. I thought I heard someone, or some
thing
anyway. Maybe it was an animal. But I got so scared I took off down the hill on my bike and then I crashed.”

“How did you get to the station?”

“Bike.”

“Six miles? Like that?” He aimed his little black cop notebook at the swath of bandages on my head.

“I guess.”

“Hold on one second.” He pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket and I could hear him giving directions to the crime scene.
“Listen, I have to go. But I’ll need to get a formal statement from you later.”

“Okay.”

“One more thing. I need your word that you won’t discuss the details of this case with anyone.”

“Sure.”

“An officer will be in here in a minute to get your name and number. Your parents must be worried sick.”

“My parents? They’re in…” I tried to remember.
“Colombia. Or maybe it’s Panama by now. They’re on a cruise.”

“So who are you staying with?”

“Huh?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Who’s taking care of you?”

“Taking care of me? What are you talking about?”

He stopped short. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-six. How old are you?”

His skin was tinging red around the scalp. “Never mind. Just never mind. Just tell the officer who we should call.”

“Oh, man, my housemates. They must be going nuts.” I tried to sit up, and thought better of it.

“Anyway, thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned to go, and as he opened his coat to put his phone away I caught sight of a dark red splotch on
his shirt. “Is that blood?”

He stopped in the doorway and looked down at the six-inch stain. “Yeah.”

“Are you hurt?”

“It’s not my blood. It’s yours. From the police station.”

“That was you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good catch,” I said, but he’d already bolted down the hall.

M
Y FRIEND
M
AD CAME TO PICK ME UP FROM THE HOSPI
tal. He drove his car, which made it quite an occasion, since Jake Madison pulls his ancient Volvo out of the alley behind
his apartment roughly four times a year. Mad walks everywhere, not because he’s environmentally conscious but because he believes
deeply in not going to jail for DWI. It’s no accident he lives 132 steps from the paper and 96 from our favorite bar.

“Shit, Bernier, you look like hell.”

“Charmed, I’m sure. Now will you get me out of here?”

“You sure did fuck yourself up.”

“Come on, Mad, it isn’t nice to blame the victim.”

The nurse came and though I’d had visions of being wheeled out like Cleopatra, in the end the elevator was tied up and I had
to hoof it down three flights to the front door. Mad offered to do the gentlemanly thing and bring the car around but it seemed
silly since he was parked thirty feet from the entrance. He did open the door for
me, however, and when I sat down a spring jabbed my rear end right through my jeans.

“How many stitches you get?”

“Thirty-two, divided evenly among my knees, elbow, and pretty little noggin. How’d you like my bald patch?” I parted my hair
to show him. “They shaved me. Cool, huh?”

“Is that gonna grow back?”

“Nope. I have to join the Hair Club for Women.”

“You serious?”

“No.”

“Bill wants to see you as soon as you’re healthy.” Bill’s our city editor, a type-A kind of guy who thinks that any reporter
who doesn’t file twice a day owes him some sort of Japanese suicide ceremony.

“Is that how he put it? Or did he say he wants me there
now
?”

“The latter. But I told him you’d be there when you can make it up the stairs by yourself.”

“That would be now.”

“Fuck ‘m.”

“Have pity. He must be going out of his gourd with the new cops guy.”

“Junior? Oh, not to worry. He’s got lots of experience. He covered at least one drunk-and-disorderly at his college paper.”

“You calling him Junior to his face now?” Mad crinkled his eyebrows. The new cop reporter had only been at the paper six weeks,
and I hadn’t worked with him that closely. But Mad was on cops for a while in his misspent youth, before he switched over
to the science beat and stayed there, and he’d been appointed the new kid’s fairy
godfather. He was not thrilled. “I bet Bill’d give his left nut to have Gordon back. You hear from him?”

“That big-city shithead? He called to see if you were okay. He wants you to call him when you get home.”

Gordon Band is a reporter for the
New York Times
who spent nine months in upstate purgatory as punishment for a particularly egregious newsroom meltdown. The paper had banned
him for life, but no one seemed to recall this fact once he helped break one of the year’s biggest national stories, dateline
Gabriel. He’d blown town in February for the isle of Manhattan, and no one had heard from him since.

“How did he hear about what happened?”

“How does he hear about anything? It was on the wire.”

“I was on the
wire
? Are you kidding me?”

“How hard did you hit your head? Of course it was on the wire. Front page of every paper in New York State.”

“Even the
Times
?”

“Okay, not them. You can’t expect them to give a damn who gets capped north of Westchester.”

“Jesus, the cops are gonna kill me. You should have seen ‘em when they figured out who I was. Chief Hill came into my hospital
room personally to tell me to keep my mouth shut, that I wasn’t a reporter, I was, get this, ‘a material witness to a crime,’
but by then I’d already spilled everything to Bill. So there.”

“You filed from your hospital bed? You da woman.”

“Did I tell you the first cop who talked to me thought I was in
high school
?”

“I heard.”

“Man, poor Junior. What a way to get started. Multiple homicide. I wouldn’t want to be covering it.”

“Liar.”